Saturday, 31 October 2009

The teabaggers have won the battle in a special congressional election in upstate New York. Just three days before the election, the Rethuglican candidate drops out, leaving the field to a local Democrat and a carpetbagging, teabagging nutbar (emphasis lovingitly added by moi).

Ms. Scozzafava had been under siege from conservative leaders because she supported gay rights and abortion rights and was considered too liberal on various fiscal issues.

The Republican National Committee, which had strongly backed Ms. Scozzafava’s candidacy, issued a statement applauding her decision and announcing it was now supporting Mr. Hoffman.

“Effective immediately, the R.N.C. will endorse and support the Conservative candidate in the race, Doug Hoffman,” the party’s national chairman, Michael Steele, said. “Doug’s campaign will receive the financial backing of the R.N.C. and get-out-the-vote efforts to defeat Bill Owens on Tuesday.”

Yet other prominent Republicans expressed concern that Ms. Scozzafava’s decision seemed likely to encourage conservatives going into next year’s midterm elections, raising the prospect of more primaries against Republican candidates that they deem too moderate. Party leaders — including Mr. Steele and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker — had argued that local parties should be permitted to pick candidates that most closely mirror the sentiments of the district, even if those candidates vary from Republican orthodoxy on some issues.

“This makes life more complicated from the standpoint of this: If we get into a cycle where every time one side loses, they run a third-party candidate, we’ll make Pelosi speaker for life and guarantee Obama’s re-election,” said Mr. Gingrich, who had endorsed Ms. Scozzafava.

“I felt very deeply that when you have all 11 county chairman voting for someone, that it wasn’t appropriate for me to come in and render my judgment,” he said. “I think we are going to get into a very difficult environment around the country if suddenly conservative leaders decide they are going to anoint people without regard to local primaries and local choices.”

Ms. Scozzafava, a state assemblywoman and former small-town mayor, was nominated this summer by Republican county leaders who quickly found their choice second-guessed by the party’s conservative wing. Many officials in the district, a vast expanse from the Vermont border through the Adirondacks to Lake Ontario, were deeply resentful of the outside involvement.

Woowee. Newt Gingrich supported a candidate that the whackjobs called a 'radical liberal'. I think I just saw a formation of porkers overhead.

Here's some information on the carpetbagger and on the Democrat, who sounds like a good, smart guy. Law professor, even.

And here's the scoop on the dirty tricks the teabaggers employed, including fake websites and astroturfing.

The Teabaggers pulled out their really big guns. Sawah Palin not only endorsed the carpetbagging teabagger, but also 'trashed' the Rethuglican.

Hoffman [the carpetbagger] couldn’t answer the simplest questions on local economic and transportation issues posed by the editorial board of the Watertown Daily Times, whining that they were “parochial” and should have been given to him in advance. In my parochial school that was called cheating.

Palin, who resigned as Alaska governor in July, didn’t have to leave home to toss her grenade. She did it from the privacy of her laptop. I guess she also can see upstate New York from her front porch.

Yeah, well, they've won the battle but according to many pundits, they've likely handed the Dems a district held by Rethuglicans for nearly a century.

Friday, 30 October 2009

"The noose has tightened around the necks of Christians to keep them from speaking out on certain moral issues. And it all was embodied in something called the Hate crimes bill that President Obama said was a major victory for America. I’m not sure if America was the beneficiary. [...] We have voted into office a group of people who are opposed to many of the fundamental Christian beliefs of our nation."

Thursday, 29 October 2009

Maisy Odjick and Shannon Alexander vanished from the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg community near Maniwaki in September 2008, leaving behind their wallets and clothing.

Family members say they've had little help from Quebec provincial police, who initially believed the girls ran away. "Two teenagers don't just disappear off the face of this Earth with nothing. They had no ID, they had no clothes except for the ones on their back," said Odjick [Maisy's mother Laurie], as she fought back tears.

"There was no support, there was no investigation. Search teams weren't involved."

Throughout the investigation, native activists have criticized police for not taking the case seriously because the girls are Aboriginal.

If the girls' relatives had reported that the girls had been forcibly converted to Islam, perhaps an immediate Canada-wide alert would have been issued, as it has happened in the UK for this girl.But then, Maisy and Shannon are not the pallid-skinned daughters of an Islamophobic community, are they?Yeah - I'm being sarcastic. It's not just young Aboriginal women or girls that are at risk; any curious or vulnerable adolescent can become the target of a sexual predator or forced into service for prostitution networks.

Logue, the youth intervention co-ordinator for the Ottawa Police Service, isn’t sounding the alarm just yet. There aren’t hard numbers to support the theory, but the anecdotal evidence coming from the street is enough to prompt police and their partner agencies to discuss preventative measures.

Castille Troy, executive director of Minwaashin Lodge, fears the girls are being trafficked to other large Canadian cities and possibly out of the country. Being lured into prostitution isn’t specific to Aboriginal girls, but Troy points out a variety of factors, including urban culture shock, addictions and other mental health issues, that pull them into the dangerous lifestyle.

“There are predators out there just waiting for girls,” Troy says. “It’s an extremely dangerous situation for girls to find themselves in.”

The issue of Aboriginal women disappearing has been a cross-country concern for years. The Native Women’s Association of Canada has counted more than 510 cases of missing or murdered Aboriginal females over the past three decades.

We wrote here that Robert Pickton said that the Bible was his inspiration for his crusade against those he considered evil. A form of Christian "honour" killing of marginal women, it would seem.

I've been remiss. There have been developments in two stories I was following here at DJ!

First, the bizarre case of self-abortion in Australia. Some charges were dropped and I was hoping the rest would be too. But, sadly, no. The young couple will face trial at some unspecified date. They are out on bail.

Next, the very sad case of Harlan Drake, who shot and killed two men in Michigan, one of them -- to the delight of the pro-liars -- an anti-abortion zealot, is back in the news. A month ago, he had been found not competent to stand trial, and was sent to a psychiatric institution for treatment. Apparently, he has responded well. He has now been deemed competent.

The prosecutor says that a notice of insanity defense has been filed.

I want to hear his reasons, such as they might be given his disturbed state of mind, for shooting a gravel-pit owner and an anti-abortion nut.

The fetus fetishists are having parties in their pants anticipating any suggestion that the accused holds 'pro-abort' views. Because, you know, that would totally and absolutely even things up on the 'who's more violent than who?' debate.

The Maryland state senate is considering a bill that would require so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) to issue a disclaimer stating that they are not required to provide accurate information. State Sen. Richard Madaleno Jr. proposed the bill following an investigative report by NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland on CPCs, which found that such centers provided factually incorrect information about abortion, were not open regarding their pro-life stance, and even lacked medical services in some cases.

(I gather it didn't pass.)

But the good pro-choice people of Maryland soldiered on, and now via RH Reality Check, we learn that the city of Baltimore is debating the same sort of legislation.

Advocates on both sides of the abortion debate filled Baltimore City Council chambers for a contentious hearing on legislation that would require pregnancy counseling clinics that do not provide abortion services to post signs indicating that policy.

The legislation would affect four centers, two of which are funded by the Roman Catholic Church. The centers provide adoption information and counseling, but do not perform abortions or issue contraceptives.

City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake introduced the bill at the behest of Planned Parenthood, a pro-choice organization that hopes the Baltimore legislation will serve as a model for a national effort.

"This is a bill about truth in advertising," Rawlings-Blake said. "Crisis pregnancy centers provide good and charitable work. A simple sign insures everyone walking into a center knows what to expect."

Planned Parenthood is targetting city governments rather than state legislatures, figuring, probably correctly, that city folk are more liberal and sophisticated in their views on meddling in other people's decisions.

Obviously, we have nothing against these centres helping women who want to continue their pregnancies and who know what they're walking into.

But, funnily, 'counsellors' at these centres are taught to focus on the 'abortion vulnerable' -- women who are considering abortion. These women are offered all kinds of bribes to reject abortion.

Our task in greeting new clients was to determine, on a scale from 1-10, how "abortion vulnerable" the woman is. That is, is she considering abortion, or did she come here because she's already chosen life and wants help with the new baby? If a woman was deemed not abortion vulnerable at all, they were often given nothing more than an opportunity to volunteer at the CPC itself, on top of whatever real job they actually had. They were paid in diapers, wet wipes, formula, some second-hand clothing. Nothing substantial. Certainly no prenatal care or anything like that. The abortion vulnerable women, however, they were offered the lot. High chairs, cribs, brand new clothing, even financial assistance for prenatal and pediatric care in rare cases! Doesn't that seem backwards? There are women who wanted to just have the abortion and be done with it, pay their $400 or whatever it is, and leave it behind. But they were getting what women who were struggling to make their choices should have had. I had many conversations with God about this, and with each one I became more convinced that what I was doing was not God's work at all.

A sane response to Sarah Palin's prevarications about the US health care reform initiative has been rabidly attacked by her zealot fans and supporters.

A lot of folks use Facebook to stay in touch with friends and family. For Sarah Palin, it's a great way to spread lies about health insurance reform. A few months back, Palin took to Facebook to declare that health reform would create "death panels," and drive private insurers out of business -- and nonpartisan factcheck sites and the independent Congressional Budget Office debunked those lies.

But that didn't stop Sarah Palin. She's back with a new Facebook note claiming that reform will raise costs on families and drive up deficits. Unfortunately for her, even the conservative "Tax Foundation" says those claims are false. So, this week, we're calling out Sarah Palin and taking to Facebook to debunk her lies on the very same pages she's using to spread them.

Watch the video and check out the comments in support of Palin - as well as those raising intelligent points.

Wednesday, 28 October 2009

Attendance numbers at rallies or marches or protests have always been contentious. I remember participating in huge antiwar marches in the sixties. Later, there would be conflicting reports of how many people were there. Police estimates were always -- at most -- about a third of what march organizers claimed.

I figured then that both sides were fiddling the figures.

Figuring crowds is apparently so fraught that officials in Washington, DC, have given up estimating protests in the city, which allows everybody to just make up any old number they like.

But yesterday, someone told a real whopper. ABC News, citing the DC fire department, reported that between 60,000 and 70,000 people had attended the tea party rally at the Capitol. By the time this figure reached Michelle Malkin, however, it had been blown up to 2,000,000. There is a big difference, obviously, between 70,000 and 2,000,000. That's not a twofold or threefold exaggeration -- it's roughly a thirtyfold exaggeration.

Well, somebody got bloody tired of hearing such wild claims and set out to find a way to accurately estimate crowds.

Spain is trying to modernize its abortion laws. On October 17, there was a MASSIVE fetus fetishist march in Madrid.

Media and the police in Madrid estimated there were about 250,000 marchers, which is still a heckuva big turnout.

But wait.

A guy in Spain, Juan Manuel Gutiérrez, was so irritated at the bullshit that he ran 300 aerial photos through some sophisticated software and came up with a new number.

It was billed as the biggest outpouring of emotion against the abortion law yet.

Organisers claimed that millions poured through the streets of Madrid in an anti-abortion protest last week, while the media and police estimated numbers of around 250,000.

In fact, just 55,316 brave souls made it onto the streets to oppose the government’s plan to increase the legal period from 14 to 22 weeks, according to an independent company Lynce that has found a scientific answer to estimating crowd numbers.

So good are Lynce’s methods that the national press agency Efe, has now issued a statement insisting that even the police and media exaggerated numbers by five times.

There is still a margin of error, but it is just 15 per cent, not orders of magnitude.

If I were a major news operation, I'd have this company, Lynce, on speed-dial.

This was on Radio-Canada. A group of pregnant women in their first trimester who had been waiting for hours in an Ottawa community health centre for the vaccination against H1N1 flu were told to go home. A health care worker told them that the only form of vaccine that they currently had in stock was the type with an adjuvant. The women were told that health authorities had decided NOT to administer this form of the vaccine to women in the first 20 weeks of their pregnancy.Unfortunately this information was not communicated to media or to front line health care workers who could have determined from a preliminary triage that these women were candidates for the non-adjuvanted form of the vaccine, which won't be available until next month to clinics. I just checked the CBC news site, it still only identifies all "pregnant women" as a priority group.One wonders how many of these pregnant women will become ill from being exposed - while waiting for hours in a community centre clinic - to a great number of people, contagious with other illnesses.

It would appear that on the Gatineau side of the river, in spite of other confusion, at least that message was clearly provided.Update: Urgh - some public health officials are waffling about the risks of the adjuvant administered to first-trimester pregnant women, lots of loose talk about balancing danger of getting H1N1 if one has a pre-existing health conditions and the effect it might have on fetal development. More attemps to cover all eventualities and all asses. Urgh.

Tuesday, 27 October 2009

Local pro-life activists say that they recognized the escort at the ACU Health Center as Sr. Donna Quinn, a nun outspokenly in favor of legalized abortion, after seeing her photo in a Chicago Tribune article.

SHRIEEEEEK!

She's in favour of legalized abortion, but why would she act as an escort?

Sr. Patricia Mulcahey, OP, Quinn's Prioress at the Sinsinawa Dominican community, said in an email response to LSN that the nun sees her volunteer activity as "accompanying women who are verbally abused by protestors. Her stance is that if the protestors were not abusive, she would not be there."

So, in the opinion of a Catholic nun, the abortion-clinic stalkers are not the peaceful, prayerful 'witnesses' they claim to be. They're abusers.

Which brings us to a recent article that Maureen Dowd is taking some crap over. It's called 'The Nuns' Story'.

In 2004, the cardinal who would become Pope Benedict XVI wrote a Vatican document urging women to be submissive partners, resisting any adversarial roles with men and cultivating “feminine values” like “listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting.”

Nuns need to be even more sepia-toned for the über-conservative pope, who was christened “God’s Rottweiler” for his enforcement of orthodoxy. Once a conscripted member of the Hitler Youth, Benedict pardoned a schismatic bishop who claimed that there was no Nazi gas chamber. He also argued on a trip to Africa that distributing condoms could make the AIDS crisis worse.

The Vatican is now conducting two inquisitions into the “quality of life” of American nuns, a dwindling group with an average age of about 70, hoping to herd them back into their old-fashioned habits and convents and curb any speck of modernity or independence.

Nuns who took Vatican II as a mandate for reimagining their mission “started to look uppity to an awful lot of bishops and priests and, of course, the Vatican,” said Kenneth Briggs, the author of “Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns.”

The church enabled rampant pedophilia, but nuns who live in apartments and do social work with ailing gays? Sacrilegious! The pope can wear Serengeti sunglasses and expensive red loafers, but shorter hems for nuns? Disgraceful!

Monday, 26 October 2009

Perhaps they should have chosen a headline that screeched "honour" killings!But unlike the rabid and pathologically anti-feminist Naomi Lakritz and Barbara Kay, the women of the YWCA don't profit from peddling cheap shots at human misery.No, they're more the 'roll-up-your-sleeves and pitch in to help' type of gals. In this October 13 media release, they say:

A new report by YWCA Canada, the country's largest provider of shelter for women, calls on all three levels of government to coordinate policies on violence against women. Life Beyond Shelter, released today by YWCAs across the country, points to the causal connection between domestic violence and women's homelessness, highlighting poverty, housing, the legal environment, life in the North and the exclusion of marginalized women as critical barriers for women seeking to move beyond violence.

"Over 100,000 women and children enter shelters in Canada annually," says Paulette Senior, CEO of YWCA Canada. "They leave their homes, communities and jobs in a courageous effort to build a new life. And what happens once they leave the shelter? It's a long story of poverty, a struggle to provide for their children, and constant risk of homelessness. It doesn't have to be this way. This report is a game plan for change with a very clear message."

Life Beyond Shelter cites the implementation of coordinated policies at all three levels of government and across parallel jurisdictions as the only possibility for an effective national response. Policies must recognize the realities and vulnerabilities of women in Canada's north, and address the needs of Aboriginal women nationwide.

"Women and children need to live safely beyond shelter, with dignity, without fear of stalking, abuse and homelessness," says principal report researcher and family law expert Pamela Cross, "to achieve that, it is absolutely necessary for people at every level of government to collaborate."

"Shelters are the first and most immediate line of defence, but shelter is not a permanent solution," says Ann Decter, YWCA Canada's Director of Advocacy and Public Policy. "We need to stop violence before it starts, the same way we take the keys out of the hands of a driver who's been drinking. We need a broad change in attitude. Tens of thousands of women and children should not be forced into shelter each year."

Canada's YWCAs have a strong history of advocacy for women who find themselves in difficult circumstances. And the women's Ys have evolved, expanding the foundation of their volunteer membership and directing those resources to places where they're needed.

Rightwing fundamentalist religious neocons and the usual strident foetishists are still silent and have managed to stifle their habitual shrieeeks of outrage regarding an 'illegal abortion' that took place in a German court-room last July.

Could it be that islamophobes Mark Steyn Kathy Shaidle and their sycophants cannot find any personal profit or professional advantage in publicly denouncing the ignomy of this "honour" killing?

The case began with an argument in a playground in 2008.

Ms Sherbini, a pharmacist, is said to have asked the defendant to let her child use a playground swing he was sitting on. He allegedly refused and instead called her abusive names.

She later took the defendant to court and he was fined 780 euros ($1,170; £718) for defamation. But when he returned to the courtroom for the appeal on 1 July this year, prosecutors say he smuggled in an 18cm (7in) kitchen knife and stabbed Ms Sherbini at least 16 times with it. The 31-year-old, who was three-months pregnant with her second child, bled to death in full view of her husband and their three-year-old son.

Ironically, the Germans have now over-compensated for the lax security that allowed the alleged assailant Alex W. to bring a weapon into the courtroom. They have deployed 200 police officers at the Dresden courthouse to protect the defendant.

An Army of God manual. A prison cookbook compiled by a woman doing time for abortion clinic bombings and arsons. An autographed bullhorn.

These are among the items that abortion foes plan to auction on eBay and other Web sites in a fundraiser for Scott Roeder, the Kansas City man charged with killing Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller.

“This is unique,” said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who will sign the bullhorn. “Nobody’s ever done this before. The goal is that everybody makes money for Scott Roeder’s defense.”

One abortion-rights leader called the auction deplorable and said it could lead to more violence.

“The network of extremists promoting and defending the murder of doctors is contributing to escalating threats against clinics and doctors across the country,” said Kathy Spillar, executive vice president of the Feminist Majority Foundation.

The Army of God manual is a handbook on tactics to shut women's clinics down, including bomb recipes, donated by Dave Leach, who reprinted the 'underground' manual in 1996.

The prison cookbook's author is Shelly Shannon, in prison until at least 2018, for shooting Dr. Tiller in both arms in 1993.

And there will be other items associated with other 'heros' of the anti-abortion terrorism gang.

Dinwiddie is a friend of Roeder. She also was a friend of Paul Hill, who shot an abortion doctor and his escort to death in Pensacola, Fla., in 1994. Hill received a death sentence for the killings and was executed in 2003.

“Regina is digging out her old VHS tapes of Paul Hill in her home praying before Shelley’s trial,” Leach said. “She wants to start that one off at $500.”

The bullhorn autographed by Dinwiddie is similar to those she used when protesting outside abortion clinics.

The money raised will go to Roeder's defense. Roeder is pretty thrilled about it, having been thrown under the bus by another prominent gang of terrorists, Operation Scumbag Rescue.

“I think it’s great,” he said. “I appreciate all of the efforts going into that. I’m all for anything that might bring some donations in.”

I have some thoughts about other items that might fetch a few dineros from the demented.

How about some fake anthrax letters identified by the FBI as coming from Army of God members?

The Yes Men are famous for their hoaxes, usually through their impersonations of corporate executives, and BeyondTalk calls for nonviolent resistance to the drivers of climate change.

Shows how far they fgo in the name of Global Warming, and if it were real, why would you need deceptive tactics like this?

If it were real? Oh, I get it. One of your 'secrets' is that you don't believe in science.

Deceptive tactics? You mean like the glurge and the glossy spreads of fetal remains that abortion-criminalizers like to wave around as though the sight of their anti-choice will drive onlookers to their knees and force them to breed against their will?

As I've mentioned before, with respect to the howls of outrage produced by the dimmer bulbs of the rightwing neocon religious fundamentalists and assorted nutz, SOV's would be testerically funny if it were a parody. Since SOV's shrieeeking appears to be 'real', according to SOV's self-defined reality, it is retarded (as in regressive) and pathetic.

Saturday, 24 October 2009

Move over Sa-wah Palin and Lie-Là Rose.Your respective fervidly imagined scenarios for death panels and subjecting women to public abortions can't hold a candle to Blob Blogging Wingnut's projections about her favourite target - feminists.

LifeSiteNews had an article hailing the advent of hand-held ultrasound devices. [...] But I can also see the evil uses people may make of it.For one, feminists can bring these gadgets into third world countries and use them to perform illegal abortions.

This is what a hand-held sonographic instrument looks like; this type is a bladder scanner.

It appears that SHE chooses to deliberately ignore published information about the thousands of self-inflicted abortions that kill women every year in 'third-world' countries, as well as those done by butchers and charlatans.

Over the centuries, the great church councils of Christian history have normally been held in magnificent echoing basilicas and stately palaces – but the church moves with the times. In 2003 a luxury hotel in Dallas [...] hosted a gathering of very angry conservative American Anglicans, determined to do something about the consecration of a gay man, Gene Robinson, as a bishop of the US Episcopal church, sister church to the Church of England.

As they dithered about what doing something might mean, the delegates were electrified to receive an encouraging message from no less a figure than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. This was remarkable, because Ratzinger was head of the Roman Catholic church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: what in less mealy-mouthed times was known as the Inquisition.

[...] Ratzinger assured them of his "heartfelt prayers" for all those taking part in this convocation. "The significance of your meeting is sensed far beyond [Dallas] and even in this city, from which St Augustine of Canterbury was sent to confirm and strengthen the preaching of Christ's Gospel in England." There was wild applause.

There will be no nominations and no voting because that's how I roll. Nominations and voting only serve to make the losers more bitter and the winners more unbearably smug. No, none of that ego-damaging peer group popularity contest nonsense here at the Bionic Liberal Blog Awards. I'll just randomly choose the winners in categories I'll invent off the top of my head. Just because I can. Awards will be announced tomorrow. Sometime. Whenever I wake up and get myself together.

Disclaimer: Award winners will not be publicly named herein because true excellence is it's own reward. You can see who the lucky winners are by clicking the category links. There are a lot of bloggers not included in the list that we enjoy and feel are also worthy of recognition but one only has so much brain power on a Saturday morning to come up with ideas for clever categories. Therefore we declare this to be an open source award and we offer it up to anyone who blogs. You showed up, you banged your keyboard, poured out your heart, your soul, your humour, your intelligence, your frustration, your very life essence. So give yourself an award. You deserve it. Feel free to grab the graphic and post it on your blog's sidebar. Give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done by linking your award graphic to the blog post you wrote this year that you're most proud of.

The categories are a hoot. But his choice of winners is even funnier. I actually snorted out loud (is SOL an approved acronym?) at the winner of 'Blogger Who Most Reminds Us Of Our Favourite High School Social Studies Teacher'.

Go. Have a giggle.

But I want to say how surprised I was that DAMMIT JANET! made the list. And how pleased I am at the category Fake Iggy put us in.

There are no comments at Bionic Liberal. So I'll say it here: Thank you, Bionic Liberal. You're going in the blogroll here.

Friday, 23 October 2009

As some of our faithful DAMMIT JANET! readers may have observed by now, I blog from Ottawa. Being born and growing up in this city has not provided me with any particularly trenchant skills or talents for nosing out political stories; in fact most native Ottawans regard federal politics like a nasty personal hygiene issue that hangs around the town like .... well, you get the general idea.Nonetheless we're not too blasé to rejoice when a local daughter or .... erm, son (yeah, yeah, yeah, Dan Akroyd, Paul Anka, Rich Little - oh what a scintillating firmament) makes the headlines.So, Sandra Oh - you go grrrrl!From the modestly budgeted NFB film short featured in Five Feminists, to a number of indie Canadian features, to Sideways, to that prime-time medical soap opera that under-uses your talents, you are more than a star - you're the sun and the moon wrapped up in one powerhouse performer.

* Overall o All blogs are eligible for this category. * Blog Post o All single blog posts written after November 23rd, 2008 are eligible for this category. * Blog Post Series o All series of blog posts written after November 23rd, 2008 are eligible for this category. * Blog Written By A Journalist o All blogs written by a journalist or pundit are eligible for this category. * Crafts, Cooking, & Other Activities o All blogs that write about activities such as cooking, knitting or other non sports related activities are eligible for this category. * Culture & Literature o All blogs that write about literature and culture (non-popular culture) are eligible for this category * Family o All blogs that write about family oriented issues or parenting are eligible for this category. * French Language (Langue Française) o All blogs that write in the French language (or are completely bilingual) are eligible for this category. * GLBT o All blogs that write about GLBT life, and blogs devoted to sexual equality are eligible for this category. * Group o All blogs with two or more contributors are eligible for this category. * Humour o All blogs that focus on humour are eligible for this category. * New o New blogs begun after November 23rd, 2008 are eligible for this category. * Personal o All blogs that write about the author’s personal life are eligible for this category. * Photo/Art o All blogs that publish their own works of photography or original works of art are eligible for this category. * Podcaster/Vlogger o All Podcasters or Vloggers are eligible for this category. * Political o All blogs that write about political issues are eligible for this category. * Popular Culture o All blogs that write about popular culture, TV, movies, etc are eligible for this category. * Professional Life o Those blogs that describe a profession or career and subjects related to those professions or careers, such as education, business, military, finance, law, etc, are eligible for this category. * Religion & Philosophy o All blogs that write about religious issues, philosophy issues, are written from a religious point of view are eligible for this category. * Science & Technology o All blogs that write about science or technology are eligible for this category. * Sports o All blogs that write about sports are eligible for this category.

A blog written by a journalist -- potential nominees, what?, maybe 4? -- is a category. While wimmin's issues get tossed in with LGBT again.

This is the seventh time PPP [Public Policy Polling] has conducted this poll and the seventh time Huckabee has polled closest to Obama. Speaking to the weakness of the field of potential Republican candidates he's the only with a positive favorability rating and even then it's only 33/29.

So, is it the general and well-deserved meltdown of the Party of No? (JJ has a great clip of Keith Olbermanngloating over relishing some recent numbers on party identification in the US.)

Or, perhaps the Merkin people have actual concerns that override the panty-sniffing Christer Taliban's unrelenting SHRIEEEKING about the most babykillingest prez evah.

BONUS: This comment on Sawah's numbers:

Palin's numbers have been somewhat mystifying over the last four months. Immediately after her resignation they actually improved to a positive 47/45 favorability rating. Since then though they've plummeted even with her largely out of the public eye and only 36% of voters have a favorable view of her with 51% holding a negative one. She has by far the worst numbers with both Democrats and independents.

Let me fix that last sentence.

'She has by far the worst numbers with everyone with more than one functioning neuron.'

There.

But she'll never be off our radar here at DAMMIT JANET!. Because, gosh darn it, she's just too much fun! Also.

Wednesday, 21 October 2009

It's a trade paperback set to be published by O/R Books and it will be be released on November 17th. Hang on - isn't the date that Sarah Palin's memoirs will be foisted upon her zealots fans? Funny you should mention that since Going Rouge will be a collection of essays about Palin by a number of contributors such as Eve Ensler, Christopher Hayes, Jim Hightower, Naomi Klein, Shannyn Moore, John Nichols, Katha Pollitt, Hanna Rosin, Matt Taibbi and Patricia Williams to name but a few.

Compare and contrast the covers.

Yup, yup. And that's not all, you betcha! There will also be "The Sarah Palin Rogue Coloring & Activity Book" that is expected to come out in November too.

The city of Ottawa is Canada's capital. It's my understanding that my country - Canada - is officially bilingual. Every once in a while when I try to speak to a City of Ottawa employee in French, it's not possible to do so and I am given the choice to wait until a bilingual staff member is available or to switch to English. I believe that no Anglophone resident has ever had to deal with a situation where service is not available in their language of expression.It doesn't anger me when the above occasionally happens; I recognize that Francophones are in the minority in Ottawa, certainly less than 50% of the population.What does infuriates me are the constant bilious invectives and accusations from those who somehow feel persecuted or disenfranchised or deprived of ... something, because the city tries to live up to a national standard of bilingualism and biculturalism.Ottawa councillor Clive Doucet responded to yet another screeching eruption from French-hater councillor Jan Harder, with regard to a bilingualism requirement for staffing two important management positions for the city:

"What's happened is it's limiting the job pool. And there's no question about it," Jan Harder, councillor for Barrhaven, said Tuesday. "People are being very honest in telling me that." Harder alleged that few candidates are applying and those who do are "less than desirable."

Doucet said that Harder's comments were "a bit insulting".There's an understatement. But I think that Francophones might want to approach Harder with a different kind of energy, in order to deflect the hatefulness of her discourse. Perhaps a nice, juicy French kiss could be planted on her every time she opens her mouth to trash bilingualism? I'd volunteer but she's so NOT my type.Update: And just in time, the annual report from the French Language Services Commissioner:

“Integrating and offering French-language services are not some forms of special treatment. It is an obligation under the French Language Services Act. French-language services must be depoliticized and the funding allocated to these services must be protected from political influence and budget fluctuations,” stated Mr. Boileau. ...

Furthermore, the financial and human resources allocated to French-language services are not adequate, yet the need for these services continues to grow and is more urgent than ever.

This has a direct impact on the ability of the Office of the French Language Services Commissioner to deal with an ever-increasing number of complaints. In 2008-2009, the Office recorded 304 complaints — seven times the number reported in its first annual report released last year.

“It is becoming impossible to do more with less, and the quality of the services being delivered to the public is suffering as a result. The government must ensure that it offers services that meet the needs of Francophones. The vitality, development, and survival of Ontario’s Francophone communities depend uponthese services,” added the Commissioner.

Oh to be a fly on the wall to hear what Harder will shriek about Boileau's report.

Tuesday, 20 October 2009

The UK's homophobic knaves are brave, even brazen these days.First off Jan Moir - a Daily Mail columnist - wrote a trashy, hateful, gay-bashing piece about the death of the Irish pop singer Stephen Gately which the Guardian's Charlie Brooker excoriates with rigour and finesse.

It's like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiralling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo.

On the Mail website, it was headlined: "Why there was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death." Since the official postmortem clearly ascribed the singer's death to natural causes, that headline contains a fairly bold claim. Still, who am I to judge? I'm no expert when it comes to interpreting autopsy findings, unlike Moir.

... She begins by jabbering a bit about untimely celebrity deaths, especially those whose lives are "shadowed by dark appetites or fractured by private vice". Not just Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson. No: she's eagerly looking forward to other premature snuffings. "Robbie, Amy, Kate, Whitney, Britney; we all know who they are. And we are not being ghoulish to anticipate, or to be mentally braced for, their bad end ..."

I'm sure we all agree there's nothing "ghoulish" whatsoever about eagerly imagining the hypothetical death of someone you've marked out as a potential cadaver on account of your ill-informed presumptions about their lifestyle. All she's doing is running a detailed celebrity-death sweepstake in her head. That's not ghoulish, that's fun. For my part, I've just put a tenner on Moir choking to death on her own bile by the year 2012. See? Fun!

Having casually prophesied the death of Robbie Williams and co, Moir moves on to her main point: that Gately's death strikes her as a bit fishy ... if his death wasn't natural "by any yardstick", what did kill him?

Moir knows: it was his lifestyle. Because Gately was, y'know . . . homosexual. Having lanced this boil, Moir lets the pus drip out all over her fingers as she continues to type: "The circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy," she declares. ...

Don't hold back, Jan. Have a guess. Draw us a picture. You specialise in celebrity death fantasies, after all. "His mother is still insisting that her son died from a previously undetected heart condition that has plagued the family." Yes. That poor, blinkered woman, "insisting" in the face of official medical evidence that absolutely agrees with her.

... the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury and the Catholic archbishop of Westminster sat side by side on the top table in a show of unity, but the choice of location reflected the shift in power. Both men played down any suggestion of tension brought on by the decision, but the unease became apparent in the question and answer session that followed.

The archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, informed journalists that he only heard about the apostolic constitution "a couple of weeks ago" and that there was no input from or consultation with Lambeth Palace. ...

Williams said: "I do not think this constitution will be seen as in any sense a commentary on Anglican problems offered by the Vatican. ... It is not an act of aggression, it is not a statement of no confidence. It is business as usual."

Benedict's chief theological adviser, the US cardinal William Levada, ... said that, under the new arrangements, Anglican communities that joined the Catholic church would be able to keep their own liturgy while remaining outside the existing dioceses.

Ca-ching! Just think of all those delicious new revenues that won't require any capitalization for the Catholic Church. There is the sticky matter of married priests and their families but by keeping the Anglicans separate from the Roman Catholics, there won't be any mingling and thus no bad influence in that regard.

In the comments after this post on "honour" killings, brebis noire says among other things that one "can read much of the Old Testament as a recipe for mass genocide." Islamophobes like Mark Steyn and Kathy Shaidle are prone to screeching and shrieking variations of 'moozlim extremism' whenever it suits their respective political (rightwing neocon) and personal (revenue-generating) agendas.It seems though that using a work of literature declared "holy" by a particular religious institution or corporation as template for plotting acts of vengeance, fury and violence is nothing new. Religious texts can be exploited as the ideological justification for crusaders' rampage against those labeled pagans, heathens or infidels or blamed as the source for inciting terrorism.It would be a challenge to identify how - and if - reading the Bible was a determinant factor in the reasoning, as it were, for Howard Barton Unruh's well-planned killing spree on September 6 1949.

Unruh killed five men, five women as well as three young children in New Jersey's Camden area.

An honourably discharged World War II combat veteran and pharmacy student, he had kept a journal of his intended victims for up to a year before the shootings. Those he killed were either intentionally targeted, or were merely unlucky enough to have been in his way.

An expert marksman, Unruh executed his massacre plot in the blue-collar neighbourhood with calm precision. Those he gunned down included a cobbler, a barber, some neighbours who had complained about him playing loud music, and a three-year-old boy peeking out of a window.

A tailor on Unruh's death-list had left his shop on an errand, so he shot the man's bride of six weeks instead, ignoring her pleas for her life.

Unruh - who had been sharing an apartment with his mother at the time of the massacre - told police he was convinced his neighbours were plotting against him. ...

He was described as a recluse who liked to read the Bible and had a passion for guns.

Once more, inspired by Steyn's pithy observation: "Must be convenient to have a [biblical] code that obliges all your pathologies."

Yes folks, the National Catholic Register lumbers forward into the 21st century with all the latest technical accoutrement festooning its website, and the same-old same-old ideology fundamentally in place. Though it may be a clunky clam competing in a horse-race (to para-phrase the brilliant and prescient feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman) the Catholic Church perseveres in proclaiming the supremacy and imperativeness of its dogma.

Sunday, 18 October 2009

The world will now get a taste of Toronto's famous Pride festivities, after the city won a bid to host the 2014 World Pride event.

World Pride promotes gay, bisexual and transgender issues internationally through parades, festivals and other cultural activities.

The world event will be hosted during Toronto's regular Pride week, but will have extra events including an opening ceremony, a human rights conference, and networking events, as well as Canada Day and U.S. Independence day parties.

Toronto beat out Stockholm with 78 per cent of the ballots in the second round of voting on Sunday.

Pride Toronto organizers say last year's Pride Week infused $136 million into Toronto's economy, created 762 jobs across the province, and drew close to 750,000 tourists for the festivities.

I am utterly fascinated by the conservative (so-called) mind. Before I got addicted to starting hanging out on the Internet, I had no idea how truly nutty those far-far rightwingnutz were. And my fascination has ballooned right along with the ballooning of the batshit craziness in the Excited States.

It seems clear that as society has gone through social, economic and demographic changes that have passed the right-wing by, they have retreated into ever smaller but more intense sources of information and then use the internet as an echo chamber.

I remembered reading something else fairly recently about the conservative mind. Googling around, I found John Jost, a psychologist focused on something called system justification theory.

System justification theory addresses the holding of attitudes that are often contrary to one's own self-interest and therefore contrary to what one would expect on the basis of theories of self-enhancement or rational self-interest. Thus, our research focuses on counter-intuitive outcomes, such as the internalization of unfavorable stereotypes about one's own group, nonconscious biases that perpetuate inequality, attitudinal ambivalence directed at fellow ingroup members who challenge the system, opposition to equality among members of disadvantaged groups, rationalization of anticipated social and political outcomes, and tendencies among members of powerless groups to subjectively enhance the legitimacy of their powerlessness and, in some cases, to show greater support for the system than do members of powerful groups.

Here are the facts. A meta-analysis culled from 88 samples in 12 countries, and with an N of 22,818, revealed that “several psychological variables predicted political conservatism.” Which variables exactly? In order of predictive power: Death anxiety, system instability, dogmatism/intolerance of ambiguity, closed-mindedness, low tolerance of uncertainty, high needs for order, structure, and closure, low integrative complexity, fear of threat and loss, and low self-esteem. The researchers conclude, a little chillingly, that “the core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and a justification of inequality.”

The above list of variables is more than a little unsavory. We are talking about someone full of fear, with a poor sense of self, and a lack of mental dexterity. I always tell my students that tolerance of ambiguity is one especially excellent mark of psychological maturity. It isn’t a black and white world. According to the research, conservatives possess precisely the opposite: an intolerance of ambiguity and an inability to deal with complexity. Maybe that’s one reason why Obama seems so distasteful to them: he is a nuanced, multi-faceted thinker who can see things from several different perspectives simultaneously. And he isn’t preaching fear, either.

Insane? Yes.

And being howlingly stupid and/or ignorant just throws more gas on the inferno of insanity that is the US at the moment.

Saturday, 17 October 2009

How difficult could it be for Sarah Palin to hire a top-notch, competent fact-checker who would review her speeches and fluff essays in order to inject them with the credibility and vraisemblance that she so desperately needs?

Perhaps that would be, for a narcissist like Sa-wah, an admission that she is not the centre of everyone's world and a universally knowledgeable expert about every subject, even with regard to those issues where she is a self-proclaimed specialist. Like petroleum products.

Palin had an opinion piece in the NRO. On the surface, it seems sensible enough. But a contributor at the Examiner has uncovered some provocative trends in her screed.

Sarah Palin wrote an article--with the apt title "Drill"--which appeared in today's National Review, which argues for more domestic petroleum production. The op-ed reminded me of Vladimir Putin’s plagiarizedgraduate school thesis, “Mineral and Raw Material Resources and the Development Strategy for the Russian Economy.” Both works advocate domestic energy development as the key to economic development and therefore, national strength. (“It’s about freedom and confidence,” wrote Palin.) I went through both documents and found a series of points that sounded very similar.

Both agree that natural resources mean economic development, though there is a wealth of evidence to the contrary that suggests that resource extraction yields poor development outcomes."

Who knew that Putin could see Alaska from his dachau?

Today's Sarah Factoid:CNN has noted that Palin (or someone acting for her?) has posted her CV on Linkedln. Read the comments - a small sampling for sure, but if it's representative of the public's mood about her, the publisher's projections that "Going Rogue" will sell millions may be wrong.

Friday, 16 October 2009

Over at SUZY ALL-CAPS’ House of Glossy Fetal Remains and Periodic Whining and Shrieking, where SHE quotes from this blogger - ‘Why I just can't believe the hype’.Here’s the money quote: "As with global warming, the more we realize that the "experts" don't even agree amongst themselves and that the supposed "consensus" on the question is just a myth meant to delegitimize and silence opponents, the less the population will swallow everything it's told without question."

Just as Sarah Palin thinks that electric cars can't work in Alaska because sockets to plug them in are hundreds of miles apart, SHE grasps at the strawmen arguments that seemingly bolster HER sense of persecution yet 'specialness'.

Religious zealotry disorder.Because the ungawdly are not like HER.

Update: Go read Bene Diction Blogs On, regarding yet another tool produced by the lesser dull knives in the drawer.

When my period was late, I went to a place called "Problem Pregnancy Center" that advertised free pregnancy tests. When I was waiting I was in a small room watching bloody and disgusting videos about abortion. After the video they told me I was pregnant. I got an ultrasound there too. They said I was 12 weeks along. They said I was too far along to have a legal abortion in my state. I knew this was wrong and realized I wasn’t in the right place. I screamed at the staff and left in a huff, saying I was going to have an abortion somewhere else. Whoops. I didn’t mean to do that, it was definitely a mistake. But I was so angry that they were lying! A few days later, my mom got an anonymous phone call that said I’d killed her grandbaby. I was infuriated and humiliated. Fortunately my mom was understanding and said she would have done the same thing but wishes I had talked to her first because she knew of a good clinic and I wouldn’t have ended up in this terrible place. I felt so happy and relieved. Seven months later, I got a card in the mail. It said, “Congratulations on Your New Baby!" but it was splattered with red paint or ink. Every year after that, I’d get a Happy Birthday card made for children, except they’re all splattered with red paint. We couldn’t get them to stop legally because there was no proof the Crisis Center was sending them. I finally stopped receiving the cards when I moved out of the state and didn’t leave behind a forwarding address.

This place was awful. I knew instantly that they didn’t want to help me but to torment me. And after I had the abortion, I was really fine. But once I started getting those cards, I wasn’t. All that guilt they said I would have if I had an abortion came true, but only because they created it. I would have been fine, honestly. I had no moral opposition to abortion, but they put that into my head and it still to this day haunts me. It’s like they create guilt and unhappiness in order to prove that you’ll be guilty and depressed.

Nice, eh?

Not only do they lie for the baybeez, they harass and intimidate for the baybeez too.

A 6-year-old boy climbed into a small homemade aircraft — a balloon resembling a flying saucer — and floated thousands of metres into the air in Colorado on Thursday, local media said. But when the balloon came to earth, there was no sign of the passenger.

The Denver Post newspaper reported that the boy got into the aircraft, which it described as a "home-made flying saucer" at his family's home in Fort Collins and that it then came loose from its tether.

The father of the boy, Richard Heene, said he had been experimenting with the balloon with his sons, floating it just above the ground while it was tethered by ropes. His son, six-year-old Falcon Heene, is said to have climbed into the basket and the ropes came undone. Another brother ran into the house and alerted the parents, according to police.

A National Guard chopper was trailing the balloon which was at one time estimated to be traveling at an altitude of 8,000 feet when it began to lose helium and come back to earth.

It will be interesting to watch the contortions that the usual US rightwing religious batshit crazies, birthers and assorted haters will execute in order to blame this on their president.

UPDATE (by fh): The boy is fine. He was hiding at home the whole time.